Roles in BSCW are either

• predefined by the system, e.g. Manager, Member, Anonymous Member
• newly defined by the user.

Who may define and re-define roles?
Some roles are predefined by the system: they can be applied to all BSCW objects and may thus be assigned anywhere. Additionally, you may define new roles yourself using the action  Access    Add role   - these roles can only be assigned within the object's scope.

All roles (normal roles and special roles, see below) can be re-defined by invoking  Access    Edit role   for any object, thereby changing the set of actions which are allowed for an object. In this case the changed role definition is valid for the object's scope, but not for any other object. This means that there can be more than one role with the same name which have different scopes and different access rights definitions.

Normal roles: normal roles in BSCW are roles which may be assigned to users without restrictions. Example: user-defined roles in workspaces like teacher or student.

Special roles: special roles are roles which are restricted in the way in which they can be assigned to users or special in the way in which they are inherited. Only system administrators may define special roles, but you may re-define special roles: As with normal roles, the changes which an end-user applies to a special role are limited to the object's scope.